Disc Destroyer : You need to check your reality report links: re intermitent sound only.
Seemed fine apart from 1 which is only left speaker, bsides they are the ones being mailed out. Must be Tech prob there end, they've only been broardcasting a couple of weeks _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.
Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.
Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:46 pm Post subject:
In the light of this The Wizard Of Oz is SUCH an incredible film!
So much powerful archetypal symbolism and Baum clearly had deep, deep insight.
I've just been reading this - a total mind blower - so subtle.
Sorry for not knwing about this - I feel I really missed something big there.
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Littlefield's Interpretation
Though he never lived in Kansas, L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, had lived on the Great Plains, where Populism had the greatest influence. Henry Littlefield explained that Baum was not a political activist but he noted a number of events in Baum's life that indicated an interest in Populist politics. According to Littlefield, "Baum created a children's story with a symbolic allegory implicit within its story line and characterizations. The allegory always remains in a minor key, subordinated to the major theme and readily abandoned whenever it threatens to distort the appeal of the fantasy. But through it, in the form of a subtle parable, Baum delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of this country as it entered the twentieth century." [1] Littlefield found that The Wizard of Oz was an effective means to teach his students about Populism and the 1896 election because the Baum's imagery was so vivid and so easily attributable to the personalities and events of that period in history.
According to Littlefield, Dorothy is "Baum's Miss Everyman." Accompanying Dorothy on her journey down the yellow brick road are the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, which Littlefield noticed served as apt symbols for farmers and industrial workers. Baum's Scarecrow is a response to the prejudicial notion that farmers were not smart enough to recognize their own interests. The Tin Man, dehumanized by factory labor, had rusted solid, symbolizing the closing of factories in the depression of 1893. The Cowardly Lion represents William Jennings Bryan, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 1896 and was also endorsed by the Populist Party. When the Cowardly Lion first meets Dorothy and her companions, he strikes the Tin Man but does not make a dent in his metal body. Littlefield equates the Cowardly Lion's futile act with Bryan's failure to win the vote of industrial labor.
Together the group journeys to Oz, which symbolizes Washington DC, to visit the great Wizard of Oz, symbolizing the president. Their trek is reminiscent of a march on Washington DC that occurred in the winter of 1893-1894. A populist named Jacob Coxey organized a small group of unemployed workers to march on the national capital in en effort to convince the government to put more money in circulation and to use those funds for public works programs to put people back to work. "Coxey's Army" was modest in size and easily put down, but it did a number of similar such protests and brought the plight of the unemployed to national attention.
The 1939 MGM film made a number of changes to Baum's original story. In Baum's book the Emerald City isn't green at all but a bland white. People are required to wear green glasses upon entry to give the city the illusion of being emerald colored. Also, when the group visit the Wizard of Oz, be appears to Dorothy as a giant head, to the Scarecrow as a gossamer fairy, to the Tin Man as a beast and to the Cowardly Lion as a ball of fire, just as a politician tries to be all things to all people. These changes blunt the cynicism about the self-serving nature of politicians in the original story. In order to get what they desire, the Wizard of Oz tells them to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, who represents the destructive forces of nature according to Littlefield. Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch by dousing her with a bucket of water, symbolizing the end of the drought that had been plaguing the West in the 1890s. When Dorothy and her friends return to the Wizard of Oz with the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West, he is exposed as a fraud. "The fearsome Wizard turns out to be nothing more than a common man, capable of shrews but mundane answers to these self-induced needs. Like any good politician he gives the people what they want." [2] The Wizard of Oz manages to provide everyone in the group something to satisfy their desire. Everyone except Dorothy, that is, because her goal of returning to Kansas, which Baum describes as dull and gray, is selfless.
I am reading this book at present. It tells me loads of things I never knew including the purpose and meaning of the 'Wizard of Oz' fairytale. The whole thing appears to have been a metaphor for the conflict between the government of the USA and the central bankers that effectively controlled them.
It is disputed that TWOO is about the monetary system and the exploitation of American workers by financial institutions, but there are too many things in the film that are analagous to the times for it to be a coincidence imho.
Some interesting reading and links at this site.
what is the meaning behind The Wizard of Oz? Is it a fantasy quest where the goal is to get out of the fantasy? Is it a search for courage, intelligence, and passion, or a search for the true self? Is it the story of fraudulent politics in a media age, or a coming of age story where a girl finds her real power in her shoes? Is it the story of incomplete men in a post-feminist age, or a quest for home, for wholeness, for magic -- things we already have but just don't see? The most gripping answer, which most people seem to have heard about, seems to be that Baum wrote it as some sort of political manifesto -- except no one can agree as to which turn-of-the-century politics the story is talking about! The answers, such as they are, are here in this website, but until I can create a page devoted to the many, many different interpretations of the story (none of which, I might add, can be considered the "true" meaning), these links will have to do.
I have been very pleased with the progress of my legislation, HR 1207, which calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve and removes many significant barriers towards transparency of our monetary system. This bill now has nearly 170 cosponsors, with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a companion bill in the Senate S 604, which will hopefully begin to gain momentum as well. I am very encouraged to see so many of my colleagues in Congress stand with me for greater transparency in government.
Some have begun to push back against this bill, and I am very happy to address their concerns.
The main argument seems to be that Congressional oversight over the Fed is government interference in the free market. This argument shows a misunderstanding of what a free market really is.
Fundamentally, you cannot defend the Federal Reserve and the free market at the same time. The Fed negates the very foundation of a free market by artificially manipulating the price and supply of money – the lifeblood of the economy.
In a free market, interest rates, like the price of any other consumer good, are decentralized and set by the market. The only legitimate, Constitutional role of government in monetary policy is to protect the integrity of the monetary unit and defend against counterfeiters.
Instead, Congress has abdicated this responsibility to a cabal of elite, quasi-governmental banks who, instead of stabilizing the economy, have destabilized it.
It took less than two decades for the Federal Reserve to bring on the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It has also inflated away the value of our currency by over 96 percent since its inception.
It has invisibly stolen from the poor and given to the rich through this controlled inflation, and now openly stolen through recent bank bailouts.
It has predictably exacerbated the very problems it was meant to solve.
Detractors have also argued that the Fed must remain immune from the political process, and that that more congressional oversight would distort their very important decisions.
On the contrary, the Federal Reserve is already heavily entrenched in the political process, as the Fed chairman is a political appointee.
High-level officials routinely make the rounds between positions at the Fed, member banks, Treasury and back again, taking care of friends and each other along the way.
As far as the foolishness of placing complex monetary policy decisions in the hands of politicians – I couldn’t agree more. No politician or central banker, no matter how brilliant, is smart enough to know more than the market itself.
The failure of central economic planning has been witnessed over and over. It is frankly beyond me why we ever agreed to try it again.
To understand how unwise it is to have the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the magnitude of the privileges they have.
They have been given the power to create money, by the trillions, and to give it to their friends, under any terms they wish, with little or no meaningful oversight or accountability. Thus the loudest arguments against greater transparency are likely to come from those friends, and understandably so.
However, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to represent the interests of the people that sent them to Washington and find out what has been happening with our money. As the branch of government with the power of the purse, we really have no other reasonable choice when the economy is in the shape it is in.
This writer just completed a six-part series on Ellen Brown's remarkable 2007 book titled "Web of Debt." This article follows from it by picking up on the theme she struck, using L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" as a combination parable, monetary allegory, and political manifesto for change at a time it's most needed.
Published in 1900 as an American fairytale, it became a popular staple, later made into the classic 1939 film staring Judy Garland, the 1975 award-winning Broadway musical, The Wiz, featuring the first-ever all-black cast, followed by a hit film on the stage production.
As Brown explained, who would have thought this "charming tale....was drawn from that most obscure and tedious of subjects, banking and finance," and (in the wrong hands) the chokehold they have on societies. Who understood that it was "all about people power, manifesting your dreams, (and) finding what you wanted in your own backyard." Who also could have imagined that "the real-life folk heros who inspired (Baum's) plot may have had the answer to" today's global economic crisis.
Brown began by quoting Hans Schicht in a 2005 editorial headlined "The Death of Banking and Macro Politics" in which he stated:
"Through a network of anonymous financial spider webbing only a handful of global King Bankers own and control it all....Everybody, people, enterprise, State and foreign countries, all have become slaves chained to the Banker's credit ropes."
Schicht continued saying:
-- "Big Brother has come to us in the striped suit of the Banker" robbing everyone through "legal tribute in the form of interest...."
-- "Modern fiat banking has developed into an instrument of usurpation and people control....a form of government, 'bankdoms,' (much like) kingdoms, republics, (or) dictatorships" but more subtle.
-- Today, "The New World Order wants open frontiers for international finance, but (that's like) asking the house owner to leave the doors unlocked for the burglar to have easy access" and be able to strip it bare.
Today, international bankers are looting world economies with the aim of turning them into Guatemala - subjugated, unempowered, enslaved, and impoverished like in Orwell's classic dystopian novel - "Nineteen Eighty-Four." He warned that:
"Big Brother is watching you (and) If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Baum struck a different theme even though he claimed to have written it "solely to pleasure the children." Some scholars, however, see another purpose, allegorically portrayed in his characters:
-- Dorothy is the typical American girl; in her case, a rural Midwestern one;
-- the Scarecrow is the American farmer;
-- the Tin Woodman is the American factory worker;
-- the Cowardly Lion is silver advocate William Jennings Bryan, best remembered for his 1896 Democratic National Convention "Cross of Gold" speech in which he railed against banker-controlled gold-backed money;
-- the Munchkins are Eastern "little people" who didn't understand how banking wizards control money, the economy and government - much like how ignorant most people are today;
-- the Wicked Witches rule the East and West where Populists had little influence; the Good Witches control the North and South corresponding to agrarian regions of the country;
-- the Wicked Witch of the West refers to Republican imperialists who captured the Philippines (the Yellow Winkies representing all the enslaved), slaughtered six hundred thousand or more people, then occupied and controlled the country;
-- the Winged Monkeys represent Native Americans - slaughtered, displaced, and put under authoritarian rule;
-- the Hammerheads were hard-headed men who perpetuated regional differences between North and South;
-- the Wizard of Oz holds real power as the wizard of the gold ounce, oz being the abbreviation of ounce;
-- Oz is also where the wicked witches and banking wizards operate;
-- the Emerald City is Washington;
-- the Yellow Brick Road refers to a gold one (or gold standard) leading to Oz, home of the wicked banking Witches;
-- Dorothy's magic silver slippers represented the silver standard and Populists' goal of replacing gold with bimetallism; they were Ruby Red in the film to highlight the new Technicolor technology; by clicking her heels three times and repeating "There's no place like home," Dorothy's instantly transported to Kansas; after awakening, however, she discovers her slippers fell off, symbolizing the demise of silver coinage as a form of currency; and
-- she and her friends' march on Oz recreated businessman/populist Jacob Coxey's Army 1894 march on Washington to demand jobs and the return to debt and interest-free Greenbacks.
Like the early 20th century Populists, Brown explained that "Dorothy and her troop discovered that they had the power to solve their own problems and achieve their own dreams." The Wizard of Oz embodies "the American dream (and) national spirit" potential to realize it.
At the end of Baum's tale, the Witches are exposed as crude fakes and vanquished. Hope springs eternal as a result. The Tin Man actually has a heart. The Cowardly Lion finds courage. The Tin Woodman is emboldened by a bimetallic tool, a gold ax with a silver blade, and the Scarecrow learns he's intelligent, not stupid. When the Wizard disappears in his hot air balloon, he becomes leader of Oz. The Tin Woodsman rules the West, representing the Populist dream of empowered farmers and workers, and the Lion protects smaller beasts in "a grand old forest."
Thereafter, farm interests achieved national prominence, industrialism moved West, and Bryan commanded only a number of lesser politicians, far short of his hoped for goal.
Baum had dark message as well. As Brown explained: "there are invisible puppeteers pulling the strings of the puppets we see on the stage, in a show that is largely illusion." The Federal Reserve and most central bankers rule world economies by controlling their money, their very lifeblood without which commerce can't function. As long as that continues, Wicked Witch power will prevail.
Baum's "Parable on Populism"
Like Bryan, Baum supported the Free Silver Movement, and like many others at the time distrusted Eastern bankers. As a result, writers like Henry Littlefield described his charming fairytale as a "Parable on Populism."
Born in 1856 in Syracuse, New York, Baum developed an early interest in theater, wrote plays, and in 1887 left for Aberdeen, South Dakota where he edited a local weekly until it failed in 1891. It was a time when Western farmers lived daily with the stark reality of dry, open plains and all the hardships they brought - drought, low prices, manipulated freight rates, and the terrible blizzards of 1886 - 87.
At this time, the Populist Party was founded - as an agrarian People's Party opposing gold, supporting free silver, and seeking government aid without success. As a result, the movement was a desperate attempt for empowerment by the ballot.
In 1891, Baum moved to Chicago where he associated with reform elements. He saw the fallout of the 1893 depression, sided with working class people, consistently voted Democrat, then later marched in "torch-like parades" for William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election. Yet he wasn't a political activist despite his sympathies with populist causes.
Henry Littlefield believes that "the original Oz book conceals an unsuspected depth....(Although) a children's story, (it) delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of (America) as it entered the twentieth century," beset with serious flaws.
Besides writing "solely to pleasure children," Baum delivered a powerful populist allegory. Littlefield wrote:
"The Wizard of Oz says so much about so many things that it is hard not to imagine a satisfied and mischievous gleam in Lyman Frank Baum's eye as he had Dorothy say (at his story's end), "And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again!" - meaning, she "and her troop had the power to solve their own problems and achieve their own dreams." So do we, and that's the key message to remember and act on.
Lyricist E Y (Yip) Harburg's Anthem of Hope - "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz
His son called him "the man who put the rainbow in The Wizard of Oz." Born in New York in 1896, he became a successful electrical contractor, then went bankrupt after Wall Street's 1929 crash. Out of work, George Gershwin's brother Ira introduced him to musician Jay Gorney. In 1932, they wrote "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," an anthem reflecting the plight of the unemployed.
In 1970, Studs Terkel said this about it in his book, "Hard Times:"
"In the song the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? 'Can you spare a dime?' What the hell is wrong? Let's examine this thing. It's more than just a bit of pathos. It doesn't reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human, asking questions - and a bit outraged, too, as he should be."
In Hollywood, his memorable lyrics included issues of race and class in Finian's Rainbow, "Over the Rainbow" from "The Wizard of Oz," and the special meaning he imparted. He wrote it for Judy Garland, Dorothy in the film, who was about to take a journey, and it began with the working title: "I Want to Get on the Other Side of the Rainbow," then shortened to "Over the Rainbow." It began:
"Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby."
It's about Dorothy taking a journey, wanting to get out and go somewhere. In Kansas, the rainbow was the only color she saw. She wanted to get "over the rainbow (where) skies are blue And the dreams that you dare to dream Really do come true." It continues:
"Someday I'll wish upon a star and
wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me
Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why, oh, why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow,
Why, oh, why can't I?"
Harburg's son Ernie wrote his biography titled: "Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz." Interviewed on Democracy Now, he called the film (and song) an "American artwork because the story, the plot with three characters, the brain, the heart, the courage, and finding a home is a universal story for everybody."
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating Hollywood's motion picture industry for suspected communist sympathizers. "Friendly witnesses" came forward and named 19 people accused of having leftist views. Of those, 10 refused to testify and became known as the "Hollywood Ten," among them authors Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, noted for his powerful 1938 anti-war novel, "Johnny Got His Gun."
In all, hundreds of actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, musicians, songwriters, and other artists were blacklisted and denied employment for their progressive political beliefs. In 1951, Harburg was one of them. His son called it horrible seeing friends suddenly with no income. There were divorces, ruined lives, suicides, and in some cases people left the country.
Figures like Screen Actors Guild president, Ronald Reagan, and Walt Disney told the HUAC that communists threatened the film industry based on hearsay and the tenor of the times - McCarthyism, coined in 1950 for the demagogic senator, infamous for his politically-motivated witch-hunts until his own his own excesses brought him down.
Once blacklisted, Harburg returned to New York, found work on Broadway, then went back to Hollywood in 1962. In 1981, he passed away at age 84, and in 2005, the US Postal Service honored him with a commemorative stamp. It's taken from Barbara Bordnick's 1978 photographic portrait along with a rainbow and lyric from "Over the Rainbow" - where "dreams that you dare to Dream really do come true."
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
in a speech on Tuesday in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed 'great skepticism' over the clout of central banks and suggested their aggressive moves in Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. might backfire. She is shown here at a rally later in Saarbrücken, Germany, for European Parliamentary elections.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a rare public rebuke of central banks, suggested the European Central Bank and its counterparts in the U.S. and Britain have gone too far in fighting the financial crisis and may be laying the groundwork for another financial blowup.
"I view with great skepticism the powers of the Fed, for example, and also how, within Europe, the Bank of England has carved out its own small line," Ms. Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. "We must return together to an independent central-bank policy and to a policy of reason, otherwise we will be in exactly the same situation in 10 years' time." (Read excerpts of the speech.)
Ms. Merkel also said the ECB "bowed somewhat to international pressure" when it said last month it plans to buy €60 billion ($85 billion) in corporate bonds -- a move that is modest in comparison to asset-buying by its counterparts, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. Details are to be unveiled by the ECB's president, Jean-Claude Trichet, Thursday.
The public criticism is unusual -- and not only because German politicians rarely talk harshly about central banks in public. When politicians around the world do criticize their central banks, they almost always gripe that they are too tightfisted.
The conservative German leader's comments came as Europe's statistical agency reported that unemployment in the 16 countries that share the euro rose to 9.2% in April -- the highest level since September 1999 and still below the 11.5% that the European Commission forecasts for 2010.
However, the economic straits of countries within the euro zone vary widely. Germany's unemployment rate of 7.7%, for instance, contrasts with 18.8% in Spain, where a collapse in the construction industry that was driving the economy has pushed unemployment to the highest in the euro zone.
It isn't clear what triggered Ms. Merkel's remarks, which came in a prepared speech. The ECB has been markedly less aggressive than the Fed or the Bank of England, particularly in moving beyond cuts in short-term interest rates to buy bonds to boost economic activity. However, German officials traditionally have been on the more conservative end of the central bankers' spectrum, partly because the country's hyperinflation of the 1920s is seared into people's memories.
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uropean Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will unveil Thursday details of a plan to buy some $85 billion in corporate debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ECB 'bowed somewhat to international pressure.'
Reuters
uropean Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will unveil Thursday details of a plan to buy some $85 billion in corporate debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ECB 'bowed somewhat to international pressure.'
uropean Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will unveil Thursday details of a plan to buy some $85 billion in corporate debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ECB 'bowed somewhat to international pressure.'
uropean Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will unveil Thursday details of a plan to buy some $85 billion in corporate debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ECB 'bowed somewhat to international pressure.'
The ECB, the Fed and the Bank of England are increasingly vulnerable to criticism because they have played such a prominent role and crossed so many traditional lines in the past several months -- even though they do appear to have steered their economies away from a repeat of the Great Depression. Neither the ECB, the Fed nor the Bank of England had any comment on Ms. Merkel's remarks.
Her tough comments about the extent to which the central banks are intervening in the economy also come amid attacks on her by some in her conservative base for putting €1.5 billion of taxpayer money into a deal to shield Opel from parent company General Motors Corp.'s bankruptcy-protection filing.
Ms. Merkel's critique jibes with statements from Axel Weber, the head of Germany's central bank and a member of the ECB's 22-person Governing Council. He has warned that too-loose monetary policy could fuel future inflation. Mr. Weber was among the body's most vocal skeptics on asset purchases before the bond-buying program, reservations that were also shared by Jürgen Stark, another German on the ECB council. In a May 12 speech, Mr. Weber warned that overly generous monetary policy had helped build asset-price bubbles in the past.
In contrast, Athanasios Orphanides, the former Fed economist who now heads the Cypriot central bank, has been a vocal proponent of aggressive ECB policy. And many private-sector economists contend the ECB's response to the global recession has been too cautious. The ECB cut its key rate to a record low of 1% in May. Mr. Trichet hasn't ruled out further cuts, but most economists expect the central bank to stand pat Thursday and foresee the rate remaining at 1% for the rest of this year. The Fed cut its analogous rate nearly to zero in December and has said it will keep it there for some time.
Although the administration of President Barack Obama has carefully avoided criticizing the Fed, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have questioned the wisdom of the Fed's power and its governance as they contemplate far-reaching changes to the nation's financial regulatory structure. The senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, recently asserted that "an inherent web of conflicts is built into the DNA of the Fed as it now exists," a reference to commercial bankers' role in overseeing the Fed's 12 regional banks.
Some private economists -- and a few inside the Fed -- say the Fed's aggressiveness is increasing the risks of an outbreak of inflation and creating the unwelcome perception that it will bail out big financial institutions when they take big risks that turn out badly.
—Nicholas Winning in London and Jon Hilsenrath in Washington contributed to this article.
"We must return together to an independent central-bank policy and to a policy of reason, otherwise we will be in exactly the same situation in 10 years' time."
Independent central-bank? Is she looking to be murdered like all the other leaders who tried this? _________________ Tooth Fairy denier
Santa Clause Denier
Man-made Climate Change Denier
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The OTHER Reason for the American Revolution
Everyone knows that the American colonists revolted largely because of taxation without representation and related forms of oppression by the British. See this and this.
But - according to Benjamin Franklin and others in the thick of the action - a little-known factor was actually the main reason for the revolution.
To give some background on the issue, when Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1764, this is what he observed:
When he arrived, he was surprised to find rampant unemployment and poverty among the British working classes… Franklin was then asked how the American colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor houses. He reportedly replied:
“We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.”
In 1764, the Bank of England used its influence on Parliament to get a Currency Act passed that made it illegal for any of the colonies to print their own money. The colonists were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold. Anyone lacking in those precious metals had to borrow them at interest from the banks.
Only a year later, Franklin said, the streets of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were in England. The money supply had suddenly been reduced by half, leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these workers could have provided. He maintained that it was "the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War." This, he said, was the real reason for the Revolution: "the colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction."
(for more on the Currency Act, see this.)
Alexander Hamilton echoed similar sentiments:
Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary, said that paper money had composed three-fourths of the total money supply before the American Revolution. When the colonists could not issue their own currency, the money supply had suddenly shrunk, leaving widespread unemployment, hunger and poverty in its wake. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, people in the 1770s were keenly aware of who was responsible for their distress.
As historian Alexander Del Mar wrote in 1895:
[T]he creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies...coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America [were] acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was thereafter impossible . . . [T]here was but one course for the crown to pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of rebellion...Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution. they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!
And British historian John Twells said the same thing:
The British Parliament took away from America its representative money, forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins ... Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies . . . discontent became desperation, and reached a point . . . when human nature rises up and asserts itself.
In fact, the Americans ignored the British ban on American currency, and:
"Succeeded in financing a war against a major power, with virtually no 'hard' currency of their own, without taxing the people."
Indeed, the first act of the New Continental Congress was to issue its own paper scrip, popularly called the Continental.
Franklin and Thomas Paine later praised the local currency as a "corner stone" of the Revolution. And Franklin consistently wrote that the American ability to create its own credit led to prosperity, as it allowed the creation of ample credit, with low interest rates to borrowers, and no interest to pay to private or foreign bankers .
Is this just ancient history?
No.
The ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has largely been lost to private bankers. The lion's share of new credit creation is done by private banks, so - instead of being able to itself create money without owing interest - the government owes unfathomable trillions in interest to private banks.
America may have won the Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.
As economic writer and attorney Ellen Brown has tried to teach to Obama, Schwarzenegger, and anyone else who will listen, the way out of the economic crisis is to stop paying interest to private banks for the creation of credit, and to return to the system of government-issued credit used by the Founding Fathers to create prosperity for the people and to gain independence from their oppressors.
And see this.
Postscript: The Smithsonian gives an interesting description of the origin of America's monetary program:
Unlike the Spanish colonists to the south, the English settlers of our original thirteen colonies found no gold or silver among the riches of their new land. Neither did they receive great supplies of gold and silver coins from Britain - money was supposed to move the other way, to the mother country, in exchange for goods. The monetary system in the colonies was "notable because it was based on thin air," says Smithsonian numismatics curator Richard Doty in his book America’s Money, America’s Story. To make up for the lack of currency, the colonists would "replicate and create, try, reject, and redesign every monetary form ever invented anywhere else."
Necessity is often the "mother of invention". Whether or not the monetary system was created out of trial and error and scarcity-based necessity, it was a very productive system.
"This brings us back to the editorial in the London Times written in response to Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the greenback notes.
“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”
Do you get it yet? Poverty for the masses is INTENDED, and designed into the system!" _________________ Tooth Fairy denier
Santa Clause Denier
Man-made Climate Change Denier
I am reading this book at present. It tells me loads of things I never knew including the purpose and meaning of the 'Wizard of Oz' fairytale. The whole thing appears to have been a metaphor for the conflict between the government of the USA and the central bankers that effectively controlled them.
Brilliant.
Silver slippers replaced by red in the film
yes I know
WOZ NWO ZOG NEO
First off Hollywood was entirely controlled by elite Jewish interests from the start, the people now labelled somewhat carelessly 'Zionists' as opposed to ordinary Jews like those who lost their lives on 911, as is the Federal Reserve (I mean just look at the chairmen - and why did Greenspan get Knighted do you think?), so there is no way they are going to 'let the cat out of the bag'
You have to see Zionsim as a subset of a Jewish Cabal. The Russian Mafiya also another subset. Communists also. And now I think it is in control of Freemasonry and probably has a hold over the Vatican.
In the 'Matrix' what is NEO trying to save? ZION LOL
Talk about Revelation of the Method.
The first book ever on the Federal Reserve was written by the researcher Eustace Mullins called 'The Secrets of the Federal Reserve'. All works thereafter have had the benefit of this book to start from and you can be sure some will be efforts to shift the stage set by the protege of Ezra Pound.
The second book on the subject, and one that was most referenced back in the early 2000's before I got banned (who me?) from the Gold Eagle forum - just for bringing up the name Rothschild - was The Creature from Jekyll Island by G Edward Griffin.
I so recommend you check out these works. _________________ Belief is the Enemy of Truth
You have to see Zionsim as a subset of a Jewish Cabal.
No you don't! Zionists have, in reality very little to do with Jewish people, particularly with Sephardics, apart from seriously messing them about and using them as a convenient shield to hide behind. Whereas, they have everything to do with maintaining their goal of ultimate material power, yea verily unto the 54th level, 'Godhood'.
Quote:
The Russian Mafiya also another subset. Communists also. And now I think it is in control of Freemasonry and probably has a hold over the Vatican.
Mafia no, others yes. They consumed and revitalised 'freemasonry' 150 years back. The present battle taking place in the Vatican doesn't bode too well for humanity.
Sorry, don't have time right now for links but they are legion - start with Tony Gosling's own research, imo.[/quote] _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 8:24 pm Post subject:
Contrarian is in fact Rodin and I have just asked him to revert to his previous username
He was banned before for racism which he seems utterly bent on perpetuating here.
The Rothschilds say they are Jewish.
Are they?
David Rockefeller is a Baptist, or is he really a clandestine Jew?
Where's the proof?
Rodin?
If a global financial cabal does exist it's got to be proven everyone in it is Jewish before you can throw around this kind of deeply offensive tosh.
"I reckon it might be so so I tell you it is so" ain't good enough by a mile.
Contrarian wrote:
You have to see Zionsim as a subset of a Jewish Cabal.
Contrarian is in fact Rodin and I have just asked him to revert to his previous username
He was banned before for racism which he seems utterly bent on perpetuating here.
The Rothschilds say they are Jewish.
Are they?
David Rockefeller is a Baptist, or is he really a clandestine Jew?
Where's the proof?
Rodin?
If a global financial cabal does exist it's got to be proven everyone in it is Jewish before you can throw around this kind of deeply offensive tosh.
"I reckon it might be so so I tell you it is so" ain't good enough by a mile.
Contrarian wrote:
You have to see Zionsim as a subset of a Jewish Cabal.
Timeline
Quote:
In Europe prior to the 17th century most money was commodity money, typically gold or silver. However, promises to pay were widely circulated and accepted as value at least five hundred years earlier in both Europe and Asia. The medieval European Knights Templar ran probably the best known early prototype of a central banking system, as their promises to pay were widely regarded, and many regard their activities as having laid the basis for the modern banking system.
In the world shaped by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, the newly established political left included many various political and intellectual movements, which are the direct ancestors of today's communism and socialism – these two then newly minted words were almost interchangeable at the time – and of anarchism or anarcho-communism. The two most influential theoreticians of communism of the 19th century were Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto (1848), who also helped to form the first openly communist political organizations and firmly tied communism with the idea of revolution
the modern Zionist movement, beginning in the late 19th century, was mainly founded by secular Jews, largely as a response by European Jewry to antisemitism across Europe, especially in Russia.[4]
While millions of Americans look with awe to the Federal Reserve to protect the nation's financial well being, millions more mistrust the Fed, seeing it as an unaccountable, private banking cartel siphoning off citizens' wealth and manipulating America's economy for the benefit of a hidden elite.
Where does the truth lie? That's the question that's asked – and answered in-depth – in the July issue of WorldNetDaily's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine.
Titled "THE FEDERAL RESERVE: FRAUD OF THE CENTURY," Whistleblower documents authoritatively and with uncommon clarity how the "Federal Reserve" – which is neither part of the federal government, nor does it rely on monetary reserves – is an unconstitutional, unelected cartel that literally creates the devastating problems it was supposed to prevent.
Today, the entire Western financial world holds its breath every time the Fed chairman speaks, so influential are the central bank's decisions on markets, interest rates and the economy in general. Yet the Fed, supposedly created to smooth out business cycles and prevent disruptive economic downswings like the Great Depression, has actually done the opposite.
"From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the burst of the dotcom bubble" in 2001, charges U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, "every economic downturn suffered by the country over the last 80 years can be traced to Federal Reserve policy."
While many Fed defenders claim it worked valiantly to prevent or minimize the ravages of the Great Depression, in reality the Fed caused the Depression and greatly increased the severity of its effects.
In fact, as July's Whistleblower documents, the Fed's new chairman, Ben Bernanke, admits that the Federal Reserve was responsible for the Great Depression. "We did it," Bernanke said, adding, "We're very sorry."
But the Fed's sins go way beyond the Great Depression. "Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy," said Paul, the congressman best known for his steadfast commitment to the U.S. Constitution.
"In addition," said the Texas Republican, "most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people."
And that's just the beginning. In this special Whistleblower issue , the crucial subject of economics and money – often deliberately made overly complicated and confusing – is laid out in the clearest way possible.
Whistleblower takes readers on a stunning time-travel journey back to 1913, to a train on its way to Jekyll Island, just off the coast of southern Georgia, where America's wealthiest and most influential bankers got together in secret and hatched their plan for creating the private banking cartel that would control the American economy. It would deceptively be named the Federal Reserve to create the impression it is part of the federal government.
Without resorting to financial jargon or doubletalk, Whistleblower explains in plain, commonsense language exactly how the Fed works and how Americans' formerly gold-backed currency has been corrupted and much of their buying power lost, thanks to the Fed, and how this continues into the present.
Although today the governors of the Federal Reserve are literally the gods of the nation's money supply and financial policy, in previous eras of American history, leaders warned specifically against an unaccountable, unelected central bank:
* "I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." – Thomas Jefferson
* "Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." – Daniel Webster
* "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." – James A. Garfield
* "All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." – John Adams
"For this issue of Whistleblower," said David Kupelian, managing editor of WND and Whistleblower, "we tried to remedy John Adams' concern over Americans' 'ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.' So we worked very hard to come up with the most credible, most understandable, yet comprehensive analysis of the Fed possible."
Kupelian added. "This issue will go a long way toward giving you the understanding you need – not only regarding this nation's extraordinarily deceitful banking and money system, but also, to help you make better financial and life decisions for the sake of yourself and your family."
Just why is there so much debt in the Anglo-Saxon world? Bankers and regulators know well that it is in nobody’s long-term interests to have allowed borrowing to escalate to a position where the US now owes far more, as a multiple of the economy, than at the start of the Great Depression.
The answer is capitalism’s dirty little secret: excessive lending was the only way to maintain the living standards of the vast bulk of the population at a time when wealth was being concentrated in the hands of an elite.
The amount by which the elite has benefited is startling, and illustrates the problem with lightly regulated free markets: the rich get much richer while the rest do not get richer at all. According to Société Générale economists, the inflation-adjusted income of the highest-paid fifth of US earners has risen by 60 per cent since 1970, while it has fallen by more than 10 per cent for the rest. As was recently pointed out in the New York Review of Books, the Walton family, of Wal-Mart fame, is wealthier than the bottom third of the US population put together – about 100m people. These are staggering statistics, confirmed by measures such as the US and UK’s ever-rising Gini coefficients, which estimate income disparity. Another way of putting this is that the share of profits in gross domestic product is at a 100-year high, or was until very recently.
Put simply, the benefits of economic growth have gone into the pockets of plutocrats rather than the bulk of the population. So why has there been no revolution? Because there was a solution: debt. If you couldn’t earn it, you could borrow it. Cheap financing was made widely available. Financial innovations such as the asset-backed securities market aided this process, as did government-sponsored agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Regulators welcomed it all while perhaps taking insufficient account of the moral hazard problem it posed: that ever-increasing leverage meant the authorities had to keep interest rates low, otherwise the debt burden would cripple consumption. This prompted more leverage, which exacerbated the problem.
A walk in any low-income area in the UK confirms this. There are BMWs in the driveways, satellite dishes on the roofs and furniture delivery vans on the streets. In both Britain and America the jobless were encouraged to buy their own homes. No one begrudges anyone else the right to own a home or buy luxury goods. The problem is that the luxuries need to be paid for out of earnings and the houses out of equity topped up with an affordable amount of debt.
The question is whether the debt load – total US credit market debt outstanding was $53,000bn (€38,000bn, £32,000bn) at the end of March, or 3.7 times GDP – is at all sustainable and, if not, how it can be lowered without sinking the economy.
Those pushing extra debt in an effort to boost the economy via increased consumption point to the scale of assets backing the debt. The net worth of US households, including their houses and after counting debt, was $50,000bn in March, according to the Fed. Not a bad tally for 306m people: $165,000 each.
However, the cost of servicing this debt as a proportion of income, even with record low rates, is at a 30-year high, above 15 per cent, as incomes have stagnated and the total level of debt has risen.
The debt burden has to come down, which means more saving and lower economic growth for many years to come. Along the way inflation is likely to return, probably sooner and more violently than most expect, which will prompt investors to demand a higher return and make it even harder for governments to tackle the debt.
At best the debt will fall slowly over many cycles and simply trim otherwise resilient growth. At worst it could cause growth to lurch upwards before tumbling again, with all the attendant uncertainty that entails. At this point, no one can know which is more likely. I incline to the more benign view because of the size of household assets but, if the dollar’s reserve currency status should come under serious attack, rates would have to rise to defend it and that could itself cause a consumption crisis.
What can be done? First, although it is not ideal, we should not be too hasty about abandoning the capitalist model. It is less bad than any other system yet invented.
But we should redouble our efforts to increase productivity through innovation and creating new markets; simply squeezing lower-income workers is a bad option, which helped get us into this mess in the first place. This requires investment in education and research.
Second, we have to learn to live within our means. This means spending less than we earn, perhaps doing without the BMWs, flat-screen television sets and leather sofas.
Third, we should be careful in distributing the higher tax burden that we will inevitably have to bear over the coming decade. Very high marginal tax rates did not work in the 1970s and will not work now.
That said, income disparity at current levels is a political time-bomb that needs to be dealt with.
Finally, we should all come to terms with the fact that these are structural issues needing structural solutions; they need to be enforced over a longer time period than any one government’s term. So we need a new political consensus, one aimed at reducing overall debt levels while reducing inequality by encouraging education, entrepreneurship and investment in innovation.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:37 am Post subject:
From Truthout: 'new' look at taxes:
http://www.truthout.org/072509Z?n _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
A "gigantic system of swindling" or Bank of England inconvertible banknotes.
"Let it not be supposed that I am an vocate for the sudden demolition of our present system; or for the puff-out, as it has been termed, of the paper bubble; incalculably ruinous would be such a measure to all the holders of stock in the public funds . Neither would I pay these deluded persons, who are continually dinning in our ears that Bank paper is as good, or better, than gold, by ordering the monopolists of Threadneedle-street to roll off from their printing presses 900 millions of nice new Bank notes . As little would I amuse them with the fanciful plans of Mr. Ricardo, or Mr. Heathfield".
The authors two propositions:
1. "The first measure is, to provide that all men should equally enjoy the power of procuring wealth and property by industry and talent, and of securing its possession; and which can never be accomplished whilst any set of men are privileged, like the paper money makers of this country, to create a fraudful substitute for real wealth out of that which is worth nothing."
2. "The second measure is, to limit the expenditure of the state to such a sum as the nation . can afford to pay, without destroying its energies; and to accomplish this, I would, at once, annihilate every tax which affects the necessaries of life, in order to ameliorate the wretched condition of the industrious orders of the community".
A letter to the King; shewing, by incontestible facts, the fundamental causes of our unexampled national distress; and containing a proposition whereby we may hope to obtain substantial and permanent relief compatibly with the preservation of the established order of society: in contradistinction to the puerile schemes and fallacious theories of Messrs. Baring, Ricardo, Heathfield, and the whole fraternity of paper money men without real capital. By a Commoner. Publication Date: 1820
Crowns claim of; escheat to the Crown or the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duke of Cornwall or to a mesne lord for want of heirs, as referred to in the Administration of Estates Act 1925
Everything is currently held in trust under the Crown until a competent heir(s) appears and lays a lawful claim of jurisdiction.
Moderators - can you do something about the hijacking of this thread please? I was wanting to read about the money scam and all I can see is voluminous cr@p about how the elephant in the room isn't there. _________________ Tooth Fairy denier
Santa Clause Denier
Man-made Climate Change Denier
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:26 am Post subject:
Have just done so
KBO used this thread to start a new one entitled
Is the Rockefeller family secretly Jewish?
very annoying
Please PM me next time - no good posting on the thread - particularly if I'm away.
item7 wrote:
Moderators - can you do something about the hijacking of this thread please? I was wanting to read about the money scam and all I can see is voluminous cr@p about how the elephant in the room isn't there.
Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 2017 Location: Croydon, Surrey
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:30 am Post subject:
TonyGosling wrote:
Have just done so
KBO used this thread to start a new one entitled
Is the Rockefeller family secretly Jewish?
very annoying
Please PM me next time - no good posting on the thread - particularly if I'm away.
item7 wrote:
Moderators - can you do something about the hijacking of this thread please? I was wanting to read about the money scam and all I can see is voluminous cr@p about how the elephant in the room isn't there.
I didn't "start a new thread". As I remember it, that post related directly to a point raised in a previous post.
The fact is that any mention of Jewish involvement (or hegemony over) the 'money scam' or even in perpetrating 9/11 generates great heat here and is obviously an unwelcome subject for debate.
Personally, I don't see the point of this site if taboos are observed and enforced. If this site is not about airing and arguing about all of what people believe to be the truth what is the point?
Don't we have enough taboos already in the mainstream media......in which 9/11 is 'Muslim terrorism' every kind of society-destroying degeneracy is happily promoted.
Rolling ones eyes and sitting around with your bottom lip over your nose muttering "Bloody terrible, isn't it?" like Les Dawson in drag is not good enough. I want to know in as much detail as possible who the string-pullers are. This society is being destroyed by a leadership who do not care about us AT ALL.
AT ALL.
NOT ONE BIT.
I think we should be exposing who these people are, their objective, their ideology and how they manage to pull off such staggering feats of criminality and cover-up. The mass of people, one way or another, participate in their crimes.......but only because the truth remains so 'wooley' and dark deeds are distant and abstract realities.
Generalisations just will not do. This cannot be a painless process for anyone.
We need to fire up Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Jews alike to do something about this diabolical situation.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:22 pm Post subject:
Paulsen in constant touch with Goldman Sachs, his old firm, during bailout talks:
To think as school-kids we used to be dumbfounded how ignorant Natives (of America or Africa) used to give bundles of precious stones, gold, foodstuffs etc. for a handful of glass beads!
Yet we toil away, hour after hour, day after day, for potentially worthless paper!
Here's an interesting link; I could have gone straight to the link directly, but then I would have missed out on the picture and speech bubble of this pre-cursor: 'WTF?!?':
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
Bloomberg TV:
Elliott Spitzer on Goldman Sachs
(Link won't work here because of its syntax, copy and paste all of it in the address bar of your browser):
Proof, as if we needed it, that Wall Street inhabits a parallel universe. While the rate of US unemployment creeps towards double digits and businesses across the heartland struggle to stay afloat, Goldman Sachs tots up quarterly profits of $3.44bn.
comment number 6 by: Killerb
July 27th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
The capitalists and the Federal Reserve industrial military complex along with megabanks like Goldman Sachs own the united states and no president can do anything about it.
It wouldn’t matter if Ronald Reagen came back like Jesus from the cave, this country and all of its people are slaves to the almighty dollar and nothing, not even god can do a damn thing about it.
Blaming Obama or anyone else is like Rosie O’Donnell blaming a spoon for her being a fatass.
The left and right can blame one another until they are blue in the face but the only thing that will come of it is more money for the people on top. They will always win because that is how the architecture of the system is designed.
All this bailout bs is the most shockingly absurd amount of garbage ever presented in this or any other country on the face of this Earth. It really just goes to show who truly is at the helm and it isn’t our government.
The financial institutions are extorting us like the mafia and the government does everything they say. It wouldn’t have mattered if McCain and that Idiot Palin would have won, they would have done as they were told just as Barry Obama has.
I said * a while back and now instead of focusing my energy on being frustrated about the situation forced upon us I focus on my kids and family and things that make me happy like Bass fishing and gardening. Politics and everything associated with the civil war between the left and right makes me want to puke.
The government is not in control, money with the capitalistic orgy it has created has taken over this country.
http://americanandproud.net/2009/07/obama-speak-2/ _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Money, like any commodity, derives its value from how much of it is in circulation (i.e. from the size of the money supply).
The bigger the money supply (i.e. the total quantity of money in circulation), the more diluted and less valuable £1 becomes.
The reason for this is simple: with more money around chasing the goods and services of an economy, prices tend to go up.
Prices are a consequence of the size of the money supply, and not the other way around. We'll come back to this point.
Now, crucially, the money supply in our monetary system is 95% debt.
Loans, mortgages and the like.
Money in our monetary system is created as debt by banks, out of thin air, whenever a new loan contract is signed.
The money creation process is a simple accounting ledger entry on a computer screen: the borrower's account is credited with the amount of the loan, and, out of nowhere, new money comes into existence.
It is legal counterfeiting, pure and simple.
Note that when the loan contract is signed, it is not only the borrower that comes to the transaction empty-handed, but also the bank.
This is why, for example, the bank doesn't first buy the collateral (e.g. the house) that is pledged and then sell it to the borrower: the bank is also coming to the loan transaction empty-handed.
A loan contract is simply an exchange of promises:
- the borrower promises to pay principal plus interest, and
- the bank credits her account with an electronic accounting entry for the amount of the principal (this is the bank's promise to pay the borrower).
And, out of nothing, and as a result of this exchange of promises, new debt (or 'checkbook') money has been created in the borrower's account. Pure magic.
Note also that the lenders are collecting interest for this 'money' that was created as debt out of thin air.
Of course this new debt money can then be used to buy real goods and services in the real world.
The new debt money immediately dilutes the purchasing power of the money already in circulation and consumes real-world resources.
And that's the 'genius' of the system: the negative consequences of the loan transaction are suffered not by individuals, but by society as a whole.
Now, even more crucially, as loans are being paid back (or as bad debts are written off by lenders), money gets 'un-created'.
The reverse accounting entry takes place, and the money supply contracts by the same amount.
So why is all this so important?
Well, without debt, there would be no money.
Some people say, naively, 'ok, let's get out of debt and the problems will disappear'.
On the contrary. No debt means no money.
Hence, we are absolutely, hopelessly dependent on total indebtedness being perpetually increased.
We are absolutely, hopelessly dependent on banks injecting bank credit (by giving new loans) into the economy.
If, as now, the banks stop injecting credit into the economy (i.e. if no new loans are given), as the old loans get paid back money gets 'un-created' and the money supply contracts.
As the money supply contracts, there's less money around to be earned, and the borrowers have to compete for a smaller and smaller pie of money (remember, apart from the principal they also need to repay interest).
A deflationary spiral occurs: people postpone buying (as prices are falling), foreclosures and bankruptcies occur at increasing rates, and social upheaval follows.
Note also that if the rate at which the loans are being repaid is faster than the rate at which new loans are given out, then again the money supply is contracting and the authorities are worried about a deflationary spiral.
"If two parties, instead of being a bank and an individual, were an individual and an individual, they could not inflate the circulating medium by a loan transaction, for the simple reason that the lender could not lend what he didn't have, as banks can do....
Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it."
~Professor Irving Fisher, economist in his book 100% Money (1935)
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.”
John Kenneth Galbraith , economist, author, Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p15
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks."
"Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower’s IOU.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, I Bet You Thought, p.19
"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing."
Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of the British Treasury
"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money,
they and not the leaders of the government control the situation,
since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes.
Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism
and without decency; their sole object is gain."
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.
War for any other reason is simply a racket."
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler USA (1881-1940) from a speech in 1933
"There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth.
Our money system is nothing better than a confidence trick...
The "money power" which has been able to overshadow ostensibly responsible government is not the power of the merely ultra-rich but is nothing more or less than a new technique to destroy money by adding and withdrawing figures in bank ledgers, without the slightest concern for the interests of the community or the real role money ought to perform therein...
to allow it to become a source of revenue to private issuer's is to create, first, a secret and illicit arm of government and, last, a rival power strong enough to ultimately overthrow all other forms of government.
...An honest money system is the only alternative."
Dr. Frederick Soddy, Nobelist
author of Wealth, Virtual Wealth & Debt
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850, political economist, author The Law
“Banking doesn’t involve fraud, banking IS fraud.”
Tim Madden, monetary historian & consumer advocate
from video by Paul Grignon done for United Financial Consumers (2002)
"Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services."
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, 1943
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money."
Cree Indian Proverb, unsourced , probably made up by some T-shirt designer but does it matter?
Finally: a new 'Money as debt' video has been released (Money as debt II: promises unleashed).
As usual, it's excellent. It requires attention and a couple of viewings to grasp all the notions, but it's well worth the effort (and honestly, if this isn't worth the effort, what is?).
Here's a link to a Youtube playlist with all clips:
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:59 pm Post subject:
acrobat74 wrote:
Hence, we are absolutely, hopelessly dependent on total indebtedness being perpetually increased.
We are absolutely, hopelessly dependent on banks injecting bank credit (by giving new loans) into the economy.
If, as now, the banks stop injecting credit into the economy (i.e. if no new loans are given), as the old loans get paid back money gets 'un-created' and the money supply contracts.
As the money supply contracts, there's less money around to be earned, and the borrowers have to compete for a smaller and smaller pie of money (remember, apart from the principal they also need to repay interest).
A deflationary spiral occurs: people postpone buying (as prices are falling), foreclosures and bankruptcies occur at increasing rates, and social upheaval follows.
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